


Different with You

by Comicbooklovergreen



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Bedroom Negotiations, F/F, Insecurity, Strap-Ons, based on a tumblr prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 11:08:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12011448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comicbooklovergreen/pseuds/Comicbooklovergreen
Summary: Therese learns something unexpected about Carol's desires in the bedroom. Carol's wants leave Therese in need of reassurance.





	Different with You

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt.

As with so many things, this was all Abby’s fault.

The three of them, Abby, Carol, and Therese found themselves drinking too much and staying up too late. Which wasn’t new or problematic, until the subject of marital aids came up.

At that point Therese choked and spilled all over herself and Abby scolded her for wasting very good bourbon.

The talk was both educational and horrifying, with Abby taking unholy pleasure in telling Therese things that certainly weren’t taught in a Catholic orphanage. The conversation was supposed to be about Abby and her redhead, but Therese ended up learning quite a bit about Carol and her opinions on the subject.

Which eventually led her here; naked in the bathroom, wrestling with the kind of harness she hadn’t known existed until just recently.

So, all Abby’s fault.

“I won’t have a clue what to do with it,” Therese had fretted.

Abby smirked. “Neither did Harge. You’ll be fine.”

Harge at least hadn’t had to deal with these ridiculous attachments. As far as Therese knew.

“Darling?” Carol’s voice drifted in, muffled through the closed door. “Everything okay?”

“Fine!” Therese yelled back in a voice she didn’t recognize. She cleared her throat, fumbling with the straps. “Fine,” she said again. “I’ll be right out.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Good lord.

After a few more minutes of clumsy adjustments, Therese regarded herself in the mirror. Already a light sheen of sweat marred her skin and they hadn’t even done anything. And then there was the harness. She almost giggled at the absurdity of the thing between her legs, then thought of Carol laughing instead. She shook a little as she grabbed her robe, tied it around herself.

Deep breath as she opened the door to the master bath, then she lost the air as she entered the bedroom. Carol was indeed waiting. Perhaps she’d sensed Therese’s difficulty with the harness because she’d saved her the trouble of undressing her.

Carol wore her own robe, untied. It hung open showing bare, beautiful flesh, just waiting for her. Therese pulled her robe tighter over herself, feeling unreasonably exposed.

“Sweetheart?” Carol sat up, watched her. “Are you alright?”

Therese nodded but said nothing, holding the robe closed.

“Come here. Come sit.”

Therese stepped toward Carol’s outstretched hand, knees threatening to give. It was more a stumble than anything when Carol guided her down to sit on the bed.

“Therese?”

“I’m, I’m fine.”

Carol frowned, sat forward. “No fibbing. What’s wrong?”

Carol touched her face and Therese leaned into Carol’s fingers. They were cool and reassuring. Therese’s skin was on fire in good ways and bad. “I’m scared.”

Carol’s posture instantly changed, her face softening. “Oh baby. We don’t have to do this, I thought you knew that. We never have to—”

“Not,” Therese said, stuttering as she interrupted. “Not of, of doing it, really,” though the act itself did worry her some. “Of…what does it mean, Carol?”

“Mean?”

“Why, why do you want it?”

“It’s something different,” Carol said after a moment. “Something I thought we might try, But not if you—”

“It’s not because of Harge?”

Carol stared at her as though she’d lapsed into a foreign language. “ _Harge_?”

“I mean, this,” Therese made a vague, helpless gesture at her lower half, the harness hidden beneath thin fabric. “Do you miss the way it was with him?”

Carol blinked at her. She blinked again. She laughed and kept laughing.

Therese watched her laugh and started to cry, her nightmare from moments earlier come true.

“Oh God. Angel, no, please. Therese, I’m sorry.” Carol pulled her into a hug and kissed her, her mouth, lips, eyelids. She stole tears away with her thumbs. “I’m sorry, angel, please.”

“It’s,” Therese’s voice hitched. “It’s okay.”

“No, no it’s not. I’m a fool sometimes. I ask so much about what you’re thinking, but I don’t think at all.”

“Carol—”

“I hated sex with Harge. What you’re imagining, him on top of me like that, I hated it. In the beginning, when I still loved him it was…not how I wanted, but at least tolerable. But I hated it, really, for the longest time.”

“Then why would you want to repeat it?”

Carol’s smile was both tender and wicked as she traced the line of Therese’s cheekbone. “Who said that I’d be the one on my back with someone on top of me this time?”

Therese lost her breath mid-sniffle, was still processing that when Carol continued.

“I’m sorry, you’re asking a serious question, I should’ve anticipated it. The truth is, I didn’t even think of Harge when we spoke about this.”

“But, how could you not?”

“Because I was thinking of you. Us. You and I are nothing like Harge and I, Therese. Ten years, I could never ask him for what I wanted. Us, you, I’m asking you for ridiculous things, never once thinking of how you might see them.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Therese insisted, because she never wanted Carol to stop asking her things, asking _for_ things. “I just don’t understand how you can hate it with him but want it with me.”

“Because you’re you. Because everything is different with us, darling.” Carol closed her eyes briefly, took Therese’s hand and squeezed it. “I hated shopping, and then I met you in that store, in that ridiculous hat. I hated that perfume Harge gave me every year, until you told me how you loved it. I hated going to parties with the same people, sitting through the same nonsense, until you took me to meet Phil and Dannie and Louise and we stayed out too late and drank too much.”

Therese laughed in spite of herself. That had been a good night. She told Carol as much.

“It was, it was a good night. They all are with you. Things I couldn’t stand before, I want to experience with you. Because every time I do, the bad memories fade a bit more, until I barely think of them.” Carol kissed her, let one hand drift to the harness and it’s attachment. “This isn’t about reliving something I did with Harge; it’s about experiencing something new, between us.”

It was strange, Carol touching her without touching her. Therese swallowed hard.

Carol kissed her again. “Now. There is quite literally something between us. But I’m not Harge, I won’t have you doing something because you think you don’t have—”

“I want to.”

It was hard to say which of them was more surprised.

“Therese—”

“I really, really want to. Try, I mean. And if I don’t want to, we can stop?” That came out as more of a question than she’d planned.

“Of course!” Carol said quickly. “But, you’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Carol kissed her again and leaned into her and they both laughed at the ‘something’ poking between them. Then Carol stood and retrieved a bottle from the bedside drawer, set it nearby as she tugged lightly on Therese’s robe.

“I still don’t know what I’m doing,” Therese warned, giggling with a mixture of nerves and anticipation.

“You’re making me feel good. You do that without trying, you always will.”

“You know what I mean,” Therese said, though she relaxed slightly.

“I know. We’ll learn together. But I promise you, you’re already doing better than Harge ever did.”

Carol slipped off Therese’s robe, then her own. They didn’t speak of Harge again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr. Hit me up with prompts or just stop in to say hi.
> 
> http://cblgblog.tumblr.com/


End file.
